Categories
appreciation composition soloists & recitals summer festivals viola

bartók’s viola concerto – a tale of too many options

Béla Bartók

Bartók’s Viola Concerto remained unfinished at the time of his death in New York City in September of 1945, with its dedicatee William Primrose awaiting a call to meet the composer that would never come.  The story of the completion of the concerto is well-known, with Bartók’s former composition student Tibor Serly hired to undertake what essentially became a reconstruction and re-composition (Serly had also orchestrated the Third Piano Concerto, which was a much more straightforward task).